art even 2!!

Crossing and Captures Willard Yager was amazed by the pollution and deterioration of the forest that surrounded Oneonta. Yager wanted to immerse himself in nature, so he left Oneonta and traveled to Canada. He took with him a Kodak No. 1 box camera along with him on his canoe journey. This camera was a stable because it allowed amateur photographers to take pictures wherever they pleased; and that is what Yager did. Yager traveled the lakes and rivers in Quebec in a birch bark canoe. Birch bark canoes are lightweight and very strong, so they are good for traveling such areas. They are also maneuverable by one person, which meant that Yager himself could steer the canoe. Frame 33 is a picture that was taking on the water from inside the boat. Though it is dark, we can see the rapids in the water, the person sitting in the front of the boat with the paddling and the trees of the forest. This photograph is one that looks as though we would see it in a family album of a canoe trip in New Hampshire. Frame 31 is of the inside of a house with two women. Yager took many pictures of people in the remote areas he was traveling. Here we see two women, one is standing with a blurry face, and the other is sitting at a loom, looking at the photographer. There is a dog in the foreground, but its head is also blurred. One photograph I found interesting was frame 37. It is of a railroad bridge over a dam in Lac. St. Jean in Quebec. It shows a stream coming from the dam down a rocky path. This picture does not look like a photograph but as if it were drawn with pen and ink. It was hard for me to believe that this was a photograph. Frame 17 is a photograph of a graveyard in Grand Isle Vermont. The tombstones are all light with natural light, and the grass surrounding it is very dark; making the contrast grander. The middle tombstone is tilted forward, which keeps the viewer from being able to see the front of it. Frame 90 is an actual photograph of Willard Yager. He is standing on a rock in the middle of water with rapids around it. We see an island behind him far away. He looks straight at the camera, wearing a suit; which I find amusing that he was wearing such nice clothes while canoeing in the wilderness. All of Willard Yager’s paintings were placed in circular frames, which was interesting. It made me feel as if I were there looking through a peep hole or looking through the camera. All the photographs were dark in light and the contrast of the while frame made them all stand out more. I feel as if Willard Yager relates to the ideals of the Transcendentalists. Nature is something people like to be immersed in, and Yager was unpleased with the area around Oneonta, so he traveled to Canada and elsewhere to see nature at its best.